With a Hammer for My Heart

by George Ella Lyon

  “Wow! Can we listen to it?”

  “That’s the idea.” I snap it into the cassette player and soon we’re driving through foothills, earth swell, and the ocean roars in the car.

  She’s leaning back, her eyes closed.

  “You can recline the seat if you want to. There’s a handle on the side by the door.”

  “You don’t mind?” she asks. I shake my head. “Wake me up when you need directions.”

  “Yes ma’am. I wouldn’t want to miss the jail.”

  That’s a lie. Anyway, I take Lawanda home first. Her house sits right on the narrow road. Green foundation, white picket porch on a little white box. “Dwelling house,” my mother would say, to distinguish it from smokehouse, out-house, and so on. There’s barely room to pull off, so I start to follow Lawanda out the passenger’s side, but she is up the steps with two sets of arms around her before I even get my feet on the frozen mud. I’m sliding back toward the driver’s seat when I see a big figure come down the steps. Could this be the wild mamaw, bird woman whose feather is in my bag? I get out.

  She comes toward me, her left hand hitching stray hair into a bun, her right hand offered.

  “You’re a good girl, Nancy Catherine,” she says. “You’ve done right to come.”

  “You must be Lawanda’s grandmother.”

  “Yes, her ma’s ma. Ada Smith.”

  “You knew my aunt?”

  “Law, yes.”

  “And you know my father.”

  “I’m proud to say I do.”

  “You’re about the only one!” I laugh.

  She just pats her dress front. I wonder if she’s got feathers in there nesting with those soft eggs.

  “He’s a man out on a limb,” she says, “but I see the tree’s yet living.” Her nod indicates me.

  “Knock on wood?” I ask.

  A smile pulls her cheeks into furrows.

  “Depends if you’re ready to answer the door.”

  THREE

  LAWANDA: I listened to Nancy Catherine pull out, Mamaw labor up the porch steps, Mom rant. Then we went, all knotted up, into the house. Mom and Dad sat on the couch, I sat in the dump chair, and Mamaw took the rocker in the comer. Taking a deep breath, I reached back and flipped the elastic loop to let my hair loose. I was home.

  “I apologize for worrying you,” I said, “and for going where you told me not to. But I don’t think it’s wrong. Being friends with Garland, I mean.”

  “Friends!” Mom said this like a dirty word.

  “I don’t know what he wrote, but I know he didn’t do a thing except talk to me. And listen. He took me seriously!” Dad sucked in his breath. “God Almighty, Lawanda! Serious is just what this is.”

  “I know that!”

  “Then why didn’t you come to me? Why did you head off into more danger?”

  “Everything is dangerous,” I told him.

  “Oh, honey,” Dad said. “You don’t know the half of it.”

  “I know my half, which is more than you know!” I stood up. Anger hit me full force. “You don’t know Garland! You don’t know what he wrote! Galt could be the sick old man. Did you think of that? How do you know it’s not that fat jailer with a dirty mind?”

  “Lawanda!” Mom stood up too, her face patchy red. “Watch your tongue! Ray will be back with the rest of the kids any minute. Besides, this is your daddy you’re talking to, not somebody on TV. This is the man who keeps a roof and clothes over you and food in your ungrateful mouth.”

  “Yeah, well, he won’t be much longer. I’m not a baby!”

  Mom’s face drew up. It shut on me like a door. “I’d be ashamed!” she hissed.

  “Junie …” Dad got to his feet and put his arm around her shoulder. Her hands slashed out.

  “No!” she shouted. Dad jumped back. “We’ll deal with this. We’ll not smooth it over. Lawanda thinks she can go off and do whatever she takes a notion to. Thinks she knows better than us. And it’s partly your fault, Mommy. Because you make your own rules …”

  We all looked at her. I’d about forgot she was there.

  “Sit down,” she told us.

  We sat.

  “We don’t know about right nor wrong here yet. I prayed and I steered Lawanda, it’s true. If that was wrong, I’ll repent as soon as we get to it. But right now, what we need is to sit still and see what’s going on.”

  “Okay,” I said. “But don’t tell us to pray about it.”

  “Lawanda Ingle!” That was Mom.

  “Your heart has to tell you that, Lawanda. And you can’t hear your heart for your tongue.”

  I felt like she’d slapped me.

  “Garland’s got to pay,” Dad said. “And you, Lawanda, you who are so all-fired grown-up that you can leave town without a word, you’ve got to tell us what he’s paying for.”

  “I already told you—”

  Mamaw cut in. “You won’t find the truth by knocking people’s teeth out of their heads,” she said.

  We breathed that in.

  “And hate don’t heal a thing.”

  She’s got her text, I thought. Here comes the sermon.

  But the phone rang.

  “You get it, Howard,” Mom said. “I’ll put on some coffee. My head feels like a dishrag.”

  “Ngya-hello,” Dad said. He answers the phone like a cat. “Who? Oh. Can you hold on a minute?” He snagged the phone cord with his free hand and slipped around the corner to the hall.

  Mamaw’s eyes caught mine. “Bird on a wire,” she said.

  “What?”

  “Nancy Catherine.”

  “What about her?”

  “That’s her on the phone.”

  Mom came in. She had Hi Ho crackers and Cheez Whiz all laid out on a plate.

  “Coffee’ll be done in a minute,” she said, setting the snacks on the couch. “Eat something, Mommy. You look peaked.”

  Mamaw took a knifeful of cheese and made a cracker sandwich. “Here, Lawanda,” she said, holding it out.

  To carry this on, I should have passed the cracker to Mom, but I ate it in two bites. “Thanks,” I told Mamaw.

  We sat silent except for the crunch of crackers and the drone of Dad’s voice. Then the coffeepot made its last gasp. Mom went back to the kitchen.

  “Your trip okay?” Mamaw asked.

  “I guess so. I found Nancy Catherine, and some man asked me to marry him.”

  “I forget how far Louisville is,” she said, taking off her glasses.

  Mom and Dad almost collided, her coming from the kitchen, him through the hall door. When that happens Dad usually says, “Going to have to put a stoplight at this corner.” Not tonight.

  Mom brought two mugs of coffee. Dad got the rest. We all drink it black.

  When everybody was settled Dad announced, “That was Nancy Catherine.”

  “Don’t bring her into this,” Mom said.

  “I already did,” I reminded them.

  “You already did a lot of things,” Mom snapped.

  “What did she want?” I asked.

  “I want her daddy to stay locked up,” Dad put in.

  “Children,” Mamaw said. “Stop agitating and listen.”

  But Dad wouldn’t. “I’ve got my rights—”

  “And Amos Garland has his,” she insisted.

  “I’ve got some too,” I told them. “As much as anybody in this. And the first thing I want is to read that notebook.”

  “Oh no!” Mom said. “I’d not allow that.”

  “You let me go to school and read the bathroom walls!”

  “That’s the law, Lawanda. I have to let you go to school. ”

  “Well, it’s a law that being accused doesn’t mean you did it either.”

  “Innocent until proved guilty,” Mamaw said.

  “That’s right. We all have to read the notebook and decide what we think.”

  “And then whatever we want to charge him with …” Dad paused.

  “It’s your word
against mine,” I told him.

  “And I’ll tell them not to trust you,” he fired back. “I can’t.”

  There was silence for a second, as if even the furniture was letting that sink in.

  Then Mamaw asked, “Would you do that, Howard Ingle?”

  “Old woman,” he said, “I don’t know what I might do.”

  NANCY CATHERINE: It’s well past dark and into high stars when I get to the jail. There’s a trio of wise men in lights on the courthouse lawn. All they are is lights, like low constellations. My horoscope. What am I doing here, old man, boozer and beater? Have I come back for more? What could you do to me in jail?

  That’s what I’m asking myself when I tell Mr. Galt who I am.

  “I reckon you got your rights,” he says, “but don’t look for no reunion.”

  Amos Garland lies on his side under a blanket. His silhouette is like mountains, folded and faulted. Mr. Galt flips on the light.

  “Company!” he hollers. “Are you decent?” Then he adds, “She’s come a far piece.”

  The mountain rolls. “They can’t whip you in here,” it says. “They just shoot you with light.”

  I want to announce myself, but there’s no name I can call him. The cold boot of my stomach kicks and kicks. He sits up.

  “Well, speak, woman! Or are you a ghost?”

  “It’s Nancy Catherine,” I say.

  “Nancy …”

  “Your daughter. You may have forgotten.”

  “You had a big mouth when you was born,” he says. Anger strikes like lightning and lifts my arms.

  “Beat up on me real good,” he says. “It might make them bastards take pity. At least make them laugh. You know I’m going to court, I reckon. You know I’m to be tried for spoliation of the purest of the pure?”

  “Lawanda Ingle came to get me,” I tell him.

  “Aw God,” he moans, doubling over on the bunk.

  “She slipped off and came on the bus.”

  “No, no, honey,” he croons, rocking back and forth, like he could put his pain to sleep.

  “Are you talking to Lawanda or me?”

  He lifts his head. I see what could happen to my face.

  “Yeah,” he says. “What’d you cut off your hair for?”

  “I’m not Lawanda!”

  “I mean all that hair you had when you was little.”

  “Oh.”

  “It was black, too. What’d you spatter it with paint like that for?”

  His words scrape my throat. “I’m thirty-eight years old,” I tell him.

  “It was so black I used to say coal dust came off on the brush.”

  “You do remember me.”

  He strikes a pose, stroking and fluffing his beard.

  “Does the Lord remember Moses? Does Moses recall the Promised Land?”

  “I don’t guess you could quote the Bible without making yourself the Lord.”

  “Set down, N.C. Pull up that rusty, urinous chair.”

  I do.

  “What’s on your mind now? Something your old daddy could help you with?”

  I cover my eyes, not because I’m crying, but because I don’t want to look at his face.

  “I guess I’m here to save your hide,” I say, “although I don’t know why.”

  He spits. “Save it, tan it, make you a pocketbook. Or cut it up and braid it for a bullwhip. ‘O death, where is thy sting?’ ”

  “Has Ada Smith been preaching to you?”

  He looks around. “These walls preach. Even that drain has exhortations, but no matter. I’ve got Scripture written in my groin.”

  “That’d be okay if you just wouldn’t make other people read it.”

  He’s up so fast, the breath goes out of me, his hands hard on my throat, pulling me to my feet, pushing, twisting the root of my voice.

  “Daddy!” I make this pitiful sound.

  Then his head butts my shoulder and his hands drop.

  “I wouldn’t hurt you for the world,” he says, stepping back.

  “Could have fooled me,” I tell him, and then holler for Galt to set me free.

  …

  When I get out, I call the Ingles from a pay phone across from the jail. It doesn’t surprise me that I can’t talk to Lawanda—they’ve got to have their scene, too—I just need to make sure I can see her tomorrow. Make sure that she, who got me here, is real. It’s bad when your reality check is somebody you never saw till lunch. But there you have it.

  Howard says okay, to come by at four. Talks like I’m not worth wasting words on. He’s worried about his precious daughter. Imagine a daddy who does that.

  GARLAND: She leaves me, that big hulk of a woman. Leaves me with these hands: what they’ve let go, what they’ve throttled. Spitting image. I could have had her around like a mirror all these years.

  When Lawanda turned up in my garden I thought I could start all over, thought the rag of her hair had wiped the slate clean. Ah God, you don’t look forward, but you look back. I ought to know that. My mind’s got slow like a creek close to freezing. Nancy Catherine might have brought me a little something to drink. It’s customary when you go visiting.

  I got manners. They’re somewhere in that bus—behind the canning jars, I think. Now how’s a man supposed to can stuff in a bus? Curtis Ballard brought them up there. I forget why. My ma taught me to wipe myself and watch my language, or was it the other way around? Anyway, I been doing it all these years. When I taught down at the high school, I used a music stand for a podium and a nickel ruler for a pointer. I liked to whap on that stand if anybody’s eyes drooped or snap the thing on their desk if they went plumb asleep.

  Some of them kids was tired, let me tell you. Maybe they slept on the front room floor after everyone else was asleep. Maybe they caught the bus out of their holler at 6:30 of a morning. But still I couldn’t let them get dozy. You fall asleep at the mouth of the world and, by Jesus, it will eat you up.

  In so many things I have been lost. For this I loved watching Mamaw flap her wings. Old woman, beak on the small-brained head of the Lord. Air in her bones though. You can see it. She may be a turkey buzzard but she can fly.

  Is Lawanda like her? She’s so new, she ain’t hit the ground yet, so there’s no way to know if she could take off. And my girl Nancy Catherine? Too heavy, carrying that grudge like a battleship. “Let justice roll down like mighty waters.” If it did, would we drown? No justice water backed up in that ditch.

  Whoa, there’s the question. Let’s just step around it like the foul drain in this floor. Or pour lye down it and watch our corruption bubble up.

  Lucid, that’s what I am, and it’s a terrible thing. When you’re lucid, the world don’t forgive you a breath. You’re just weeds growing around the drain, sky tilting above it. I couldn’t see how bad it was. There was blood, sure. It’s what we washed our hands in. But I told him to buck up, not carry on like that. It was going to be a long war. And him still a peach-face.

  I’d heard all about his geode collection, his hometown, his girl. I knew where the shell hit, what tore up inside. But you can’t just lay down and die in a ditch of water. You know what I’m saying? He was more than that. I’d told him about my kids in school reciting, “Fourscore and seven years ago …” That was a battlefield too. You tell me what this country is but a tale of hope and slaughter. “Every generation has its war.” Yeah, and them stripes on the flag, they’re cemetery rows; them stars is what they pin on a woman to recollect who nursed at her breast.

  He’d promised he wouldn’t die on me. And there he was, blood pouring from his mouth. I held him under that water, one of his hands blown clear away.

  He was my boy. I don’t know. Delbert and my Cardin kids and me somewheres way back. If I could just get him to stop screaming—they was guns going off all around us and still I heard him cry, “Amos, help me!” He knew I was supposed to man my gun and blow some other boy apart.

  “Goddamn it, Canaan! Will you shut up?” I shouted, and s
aw his gray eyes go white. “Son of a bitch!” I grabbed his shoulders. “Stop it! You ain’t gonna die!” I shook him, his shoulder bones under my hands hardly thicker than Lawanda’s. To get the blood off I put his head under the water, held him there till he calmed down. That made it dark, and all night I held him while they dragged bodies out of that ditch.

  He wasn’t as big as Nancy Catherine: Indiana’s Canaan Zeitz, private first class. A lot of blood in him though. Next morning we was stuck together. They said he was dead. I knew what they meant. We’d spent a night together in the grave and only one of us got out.

  NANCY CATHERINE: If I hadn’t just come from the jail, I’d think this was the ugliest room in captivity: bile green walls, orange chenille bedspread, yellow rug like a mangy dog. A big petri dish to grow headaches …

  It’s not just my head, though. My heart’s like a lockbox. I can hardly sit up for the weight of it. Amos Garland. Old man on my shoulders, all these years between me and the light. That face I’ve run from, looking everywhere. Here it is in the scabby motel mirror. My father.

  I guess this is how you find out the world is round. Run far enough away and you’ll come home. Tell that to the Yoga folks.

  I’m going to remember. With no therapist, no one to help me. I got coffee from the drive-thru down the road. So old, the creamer turned it green. Polluted waters.

  I was bom while he was overseas. Early on, I pictured him hovering above the water. Over seas. “And God breathed upon the water,” or “brooded,” or something. Didn’t He? Well, I’ll brood over this coffee. See? I can ripple it with my breath.

  When I first saw him, he was eight-by-ten, that soldier shot they send you. Good-looking! God and Prince Charming and Santa Claus. The army stripped him of his beard, of course, but Mother showed me old pictures. “Soon as he gets home,” she said, “he’ll grow it back.” My first words could have been “When Daddy comes home”: our refrain, our mantra. Whatever came after meant the world would be all right. You can be that young.

  I haven’t got the patience for this. Yes, I have. I’ve come this far. I’ll just walk into it: Aunt Chloe’s store, there at the head of Redbird Creek. Seemed like everything was dark brown except the candy. And this one time, the banner, the streamers. No balloons. Couldn’t you get balloons during the war?